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Head trauma is the NFL’s biggest tragedy: Arthur

If the NFL truly cared about domestic violence, it would be at the forefront of determining whether CTE is linked to violent behaviour.

If the NFL truly cared about domestic violence, it would be at the forefront of determining whether CTE is linked to violent behaviour. Head trauma is the biggest issue facing the NFL, and it has been building for decades. (John Russell / The Associated Press)

So far this season the National Football League has served as the springboard for debates about homosexuality, domestic violence, child abuse, and for a brief time Monday night and Tuesday morning, religion. The storms have gathered and grown, or gathered and vanished. But they have dominated the conversation for weeks on end.

And creeping beneath those storms was the same fundamental issue that football faces, whether it likes it or not: The brains of its players, and what the game does to them.

On Monday, it was revealed that Jovan Belcher, the former linebacker for the Kansas City Chiefs had been posthumously diagnosed with signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy. CTE is a neurological disease in which tau proteins build up in the brain and rot it; it is the result of repetitive head trauma, and is a variation on dementia pugilistica, or what they used to call being punch-drunk in boxing.

On Dec. 1 2012, Belcher shot and killed the mother of his infant child, Kasandra Perkins, before shooting himself in the Chiefs parking lot. At the University of Maine, Belcher was a member of the group Athletes Against Domestic Violence.

On Tuesday PBS reported that of the 79 brains of dead football players that have been examined by the Department of Veterans’ Affairs brain bank, 76 showed signs of CTE, bringing the total to 101 out of 128. The sample is skewed towards those who showed the inclination to donate their brains to science, of course. But the number cannot be dismissed.

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And as Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson dominated the news, the league quietly admitted in court documents that it expects three in 10 players will develop long-term cognitive problems at notably younger ages than the general population.

That, more than anything else, is the crisis in football, and it has been building for decades.

Domestic violence became a tidal wave-issue after the Rice elevator tape was made public, and the league is working very hard to position itself as a leader on the issue. The league donated money to two major domestic-violence organizations, turned one female vice-president into the VP of social responsibility, and hired three distinguished female advisors with experience on fighting domestic violence and sexual assault. The Ray Rice tape became toxic, and the NFL found domestic violence religion.

Domestic violence is an epidemic, but it’s not just an NFL epidemic. Corporal punishment, too. How the NFL handles them is important, yes, because of the spotlight the NFL commands; that is not in dispute.

But it’s not the essence of the league, or the game.

What about Belcher, though? What about Paul Oliver, the ex-Chargers safety who shot himself in front of his wife and two sons at age 29? Oliver’s widow Chelsea spoke with HBO’s Real Sports for an upcoming show, and she describes domestic violence that suddenly bloomed in their relationship following his retirement in 2011 — she says he pushed her, kicked her, pulled her around by her hair. She says, “I was in such a mode of where I was trying to protect my family from this monster that was not my husband . . . I knew it wasn’t him. He’s never been like that, and every time after he would say, I don’t know what’s wrong with me . . . I can’t control myself anymore.”

Junior Seau, the former All-Pro linebacker who shot himself in the chest in 2012, had CTE; two years earlier he drove his SUV off a cliff after being arrested on suspicion of domestic violence, and his son Tyler told the AP that Seau became angrier and more erratic later in his life. Dave Duerson, the ex-safety and successful businessman who shot himself in the chest in 2011, had CTE; he threw his wife against a wall in 2005, hard enough to send her to the ER, and she told Men’s Journal that Duerson’s behaviour became more erratic in his 40s.

Mike Webster, the Steeler Hall of Famer who ended his life a horrifying wreck; Andre Waters, who also shot himself; Justin Strzelmcyzk, who died at 36 driving like a maniac inexplicably trying to evade police — all had CTE. The link between CTE and violent behaviour towards others hasn’t been firmly established, partly because not a lot of science has attempted to determine whether that link exists.

But it is a disease that chokes and mangles the brain, and can cause severe changes in behaviour. What if that link is proven? What happens when there’s a reliable test for CTE in living brains? Well, the NFL’s concussion settlement with nearly 4,500 retired players is still pending approval by a judge, but the league snuck in a cutoff date for compensating deaths with CTE: July 7, 2014.

All this is a complex stew, because brains are complex, retirement is hard, and the NFL is a league where alcohol and painkillers are used to numb the effects of the game, which can cause its own problems. Nothing is perfectly clear cut, yet.

But if the NFL truly cared about domestic violence, it would be at the forefront of determining whether CTE is linked to violent behaviour, rather than donating some money here and there. If it cared, it wouldn’t cut CTE out of the concussion deal. If it cared, it would want to know what the game really does to its players, and what that means.

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